Dawn BonkerLaura Glynn, Ph.D., has received a five-year renewal of federal funding for her research on child development, maternal connection and mental health, with the grant support coming from the National Institute of Mental Health.
About $3.9 million of an overall $15 million multi-university grant, led by the University of California, Irvine, will go to support Glynn’s research, which includes postpartum depression and factors related to the mother-child bond.
For nearly 20 years, Glynn, a professor of psychology at Chapman University, has been involved in a longitudinal study funded by a number of agencies, including the National Institute of Child and Human Development. Glynn leads Chapman’s Early Human and Lifespan Development Research Program.
Children in the study range in age from early childhood to early adulthood. The second wave of the research will focus on mental health and anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure from activities that are usually found enjoyable.
Glynn’s research will utilize cutting-edge neuroimaging data and also examine epigenetics –changes in the structure of genetic expression that can occur when someone has been exposed to long-term or chronic stress.
The overall goal of the long-term study is to understand how prenatal and early life experience influences lifespan mental health trajectories.
